The present invention is a system, method, and computer readable medium for providing audio/video/data conferencing to an enterprise that has both internal and external entities joining a conference.
Currently, many service providers offer conferencing services to enterprises that support callers both internal and external to the enterprise. Typically, these services are provided by conferencing servers located at centralized data centers which are often co-resident with Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) ingress/egress points.
When a conference is setup, individual calls from the enterprise are backhauled to the data center through either a public or private, voice or data network. The problem with this approach is that backhauling all of the individual call legs takes a significant amount of bandwidth, and thus adds cost to the service provider which is often, in turn, passed onto the enterprise customer.
Therefore, what is needed to overcome the aforementioned limitation, is a system in which the enterprise legs of a conference can be combined before being backhauled to the conference service and a method for managing a conference in such a system. What is also required is the ability to maintain enterprise originated conference calls at the enterprise premise and bridge external participants as needed to the enterprise from other conference service providers.